Narrative of Dispute in Kazakh Folklore: Litigation as a Cultural Concept in Oral and Epic Traditions

This study examines the cultural and pragmatic logic of litigation in Kazakh folklore. It is inseparable from oral performance, ethical authority, and collective memory. The present study demonstrates how litigation reveals that justice was not merely administered but performed through storytelling, speech performance, rhetorical wisdom, and communal praxis. The study reviews examples across genres and shows that Kazakh folklore presents litigation as a narrative mechanism that serves as a signpost for a communicative strategy, a discursive performance, and a linguistic phenomenon. Litigation as a cultural concept is embedded in traditional genres through the activities of the Biy institution. The decline of the Biy institution marked the end of an era, but its narrative echoes still resonate in the folk stories, myths, and moral imagination of Kazakh culture.